A superhero creator’s angst-y perils make this tale a strong start to a space saga.
In this YA debut, a troubled teenager gets thrust into the fictional superhero setting of her amateur storytelling efforts, where the conflicts, creatures, and characters she fashioned put her in grave danger.
Playwright Portman’s SF/fantasy novel might remind genre readers of Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart franchise. Olive Joshi, 16, is on a stressful plane trip to her grandmother’s memorial ceremony in India. Grandmother was a successful writer, and Olive, in her ever present notebook, seeks to create her own fantasy realm, that of a young, seemingly invulnerable Wonder Woman type named Coseema. The superhero is really an idealized version of Olive—battling boundless malice (her own evil prince brother, Burnash, in fact) in a planetary system of rapidly degrading twin suns and rival kingdoms reduced to subsistence by solar disasters. During a crescendo of bad-weather turbulence over Alaska mirroring her emotional upset, Olive locks herself in the plane’s restroom and suddenly finds herself inside her own journal and its draft story of Coseema. Now, the novice writer is stranded on the “Musing Moon” of her narrative, where magical artists, high-tech storm troopers, amazing creatures, and Coseema really exist. One might think that as an author inside the world she created, Olive would wield immense powers and insights, but the reverse seems to be true. When she loses Coseema’s protection, the sun-scorched worlds and their tormented inhabitants are a dangerous place indeed. Olive carries the additional burden of guilt that, as the one who dreamed it all up, this universe’s predicaments and agony are her fault. The Lucasfilm-esque milieu, blending magic with exobiology, astrophysics, and a painless layering of multiculturalism, is a tantalizing one. Portman adds a layer of emotion via Olive’s struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, which impinges on the storyline in a more meaningful way than just checking a box in the character mental health problems column. YA readers raised on various permutations of the superhero mythos should be enthralled by the Coseema/Olive dichotomy in this metafictional series opener. Even older, jaded genre readers, griping that L. Ron Hubbard hit on this scenario first in Typewriter in the Sky (1940), could be thrown by the plotline’s chain of bang-up jolts in the concluding pages.
A superhero creator’s angst-y perils make this tale a strong start to a space saga. (author's note, author bio)Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-99-592042-2
Page Count: 324
Publisher: TITAN1STUDIOS
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly...
In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility.
As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories—painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing.
Wrought with admirable skill—the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 978-0-395-64566-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
Somberly beautiful.
A girl goes in search of her missing sister and discovers a strange hidden world of dreams.
Corin, who’s 18 and dark-skinned, strives to protect her 12-year-old sister, Elly. But life as a thief is full of struggle, poverty, and loss, even without Corin’s avoidance of other relationships. Elly clings to the promise of fairy tales, like the one that says a princess lies sleeping in an underground castle after pricking her finger on a spindle. After the sisters fight and Elly runs off, Corin searches for her in Gyldan’s old network of tunnels—and finds the tale is true: Cursed Princess Amelia, golden-haired, with eyes like “sea glass” and porcelain skin, lies asleep, surrounded by flowers. Corin enters the princess’ dreamworld—the place “where your subconscious desires come to life.” She meets Briar Rose, Amelia’s alter ego, who experienced her share of sadness and wanted to fall asleep. Also in the dreamworld is green-skinned Malicine, the nonbinary demon who, despite having placed the curse of eternal slumber on Amelia, is mostly friendly. All three are running from things they can’t face, though the dreamworld may not give them a choice. Pham’s debut, a Sapphic reimagining of “Sleeping Beauty,” explores mental health and asks a lot of readers as it seesaws between emotional confrontations, time jumps, and scenes where one character inhabits the memories of another, all of which demand intense engagement. Still, the ending is earned as well as positive.
Somberly beautiful. (content note) (Fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798217113026
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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